Chapter 6 - The People They Could Reach
I didn't drive to my mother's house. I called the local police and told Bell exactly what the threat said. For once, I refused to give the people chasing us the mistake they wanted.
By the time I arrived with an officer, the suspicious vehicle was gone. My mother sat at her kitchen table wearing Liam's old college sweatshirt. Across from her was my sister-in-law, Lena, holding my niece Ava so tightly the little girl complained.
"Mom," Ava said, "Aunt Nora looks tired."
"I am," I admitted. "But I'm here."
Lena took the child into the living room. When she returned, she was furious.
"A man called me yesterday," she said. "He offered to pay off my mortgage if I convinced you to stop asking about Liam."
"Did he give a name?"
"Calvin Shaw. Northline Transport."
Northline had supplied the trucks on our medical mission. According to the official report, their civilian drivers had obeyed every evacuation order. I had never met Shaw, but I recognized the company's blue inspection sticker from shipping cases stacked inside the convoy.
Lena pulled a folder from her bag. "Liam mailed this to me a week before he died. I thought it was boring paperwork."
Inside were copies of transport manifests. Each listed humanitarian medical supplies destined for a rural clinic. On three separate dates, the same serial-numbered crates appeared as delivered and as destroyed. Someone had been selling equipment that never reached the people waiting for it.
My mother traced one signature with a finger. "Warren Price."
Ava wandered back in carrying Liam's photograph. "Daddy told me Aunt Nora was the toughest person he knew," she said.
I pulled her close. I had spent two years wondering whether I'd failed my brother. Hearing his daughter say that nearly broke me.
My phone buzzed. Addie had checked Northline's public filings. "Shaw owns a warehouse outside Fairhaven," she said. "And listen to this: the warehouse was sold last week, right after your appeal became public."
"To whom?"
"A shell company with an address in Price's hometown."
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A second message arrived from an unknown number. It contained a photograph of Owen Finch standing beside that warehouse. Underneath, one sentence appeared:
HE'S COMING TO GIVE YOU THE REST. DON'T LET THEM SEE HIM.
